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Aesop's Fable Categories

The Cat and the Mice

A cat, grown feeble with age and no longer able to hunt mice as she once did, thought to herself how she might entice them within reach of her paw. Thinking that she might pass herself off for a bag or for a dead cat at least, she suspended herself by the hind legs from a peg, in the hope that the mice would no longer be afraid to come near her.

An old mouse, who was wise enough to keep his distance, whispered to a friend; "Many a bag have I seen in my day, but never one with a cat's head." "Hang there, good madam," said the other, "as long as you please, but I would not trust myself within reach of you though you were stuffed with straw."